Feelings of Bitterness, Betrayal at Convair : Layoffs: Although employees were resigned to the latest cuts, they didn’t expect so many. They also say they were misled into believing they had jobs for life.
General Dynamics’ announcement that it will again slash its San Diego work force came as no surprise to many Convair Division workers. For months, they have worked under rumors of cutbacks in the MD-11 jetliner fuselage assembly line.
But many of those interviewed after their 2 p.m. shift change Tuesday were bitter about losing jobs they once expected to retire from, and others said they were shocked and angered at the extent--about 1,700 jobs--of the cuts.
“A lot are angry,” said Kathy Hendricks, 39, an MD-11 fuselage assembly worker whose 38-year-old husband will also lose his job next door as Hughes Aircraft phases out work on the Advanced cruise missile.
“When we were hired on, we were told we would have a job until we retired,” she said of the MD-11 assembly workers.
Now she and her husband plan to move to Arizona or Nevada, where she’ll seek a new line of work and her husband will launch a business in utensil- and tool-sharpening, a skill he learned while taking his remaining vacation time.
The current Convair cutbacks, already under way in some production areas, came after McDonnell Douglas asked that delivery of airframes be delayed.
Convair also cited its “ongoing effort” to reduce costs, in saying Monday that about 1,700 of 4,200 San Diego Convair Division workers would be given 60-day layoff notices, most of which will be handed out in November.
This latest clobbering of Southern California’s aerospace industry indicates McDonnell Douglas will pare MD-11 production more quickly than expected and might be forced to make additional layoffs in Long Beach later this year or in 1993, in response to a slowdown in orders.
Convair makes the fuselages at its Lindbergh Field plant in San Diego, then ships them by barge to Long Beach, where McDonnell Douglas assembles the jetliners.
Bob Becker, a 15-year mechanic on the MD-11 fuselage assembly line, said Tuesday that “everybody (at Convair) has been pretty withdrawn.”
“It’s like I told my wife last night when she heard--we all knew cuts were coming, but nobody thought they would cut 40% of the jobs here,” Becker said.
Echoing assembly worker Hendricks, several Convair employees said that General Dynamics officials led them to believe when they were hired that their $7- to $16-an-hour fuselage assembly jobs were ones they could expect to retire from.
“A lot of people feel angry that the company misleads you,” one worker said. “You’re working a mandatory six days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, and it appears there’s a lot of business. Then, Bang! People who have gone out and bought cars and houses and all that are out of work.”
Indeed, even workers who were hired before August, 1990--the hiring date employees say General Dynamics officials have set as the cutoff for those who will be laid off--fear they’re bound to go soon despite their seniority.
“I’ve been here four years, so I should be OK,” assembler Jeff Penn said. “But I could go right along with these others who have less seniority. What these people (General Dynamics Convair officials) tell you, you can’t believe--especially when they have the company up for sale.”
General Dynamics has been attempting to sell its fuselage business since the beginning of the year.
Penn said too many assembly line workers often fail to realize or remember that the planes for which they’re building fuselages are ordered by contracts that can dry up abruptly, regardless of the state of the economy. Even so, he said, General Dynamics doesn’t make it clear how precarious the assembly jobs are.
The loss will have a ripple effect in San Diego, and it will take a long time to create the kinds of jobs being lost in the aerospace industry, according to Dan Pegg, president of the San Diego Economic Development Corp.
“People are worried,” Oscar Anderson said of his co-workers on the MD-11 fuselage. “They have families and mortgages and now they don’t know how they’ll pay the bills.”
Neither does he.
Anderson lost his job at Convair in April but was rehired three months later on a temporary basis, with the possibility of going permanent again if business picked up. On Monday, he received notice that he won’t be needed past the three-month mark.
The San Diego native and father of four said it’s a good thing his wife has a secure job: His two older sons, ages 19 and 20, also lost their jobs recently. And his brother, who has worked on the Advanced cruise missile for nine years, will lose his job Dec. 4.
“I was behind on the mortgage payments by two months when I came back to Convair in August,” Anderson said. “Now I’ll be out of work again . . . and we’ve gone through our savings.”
While unemployed this summer, he said, he tried several job programs but could not find work: “All I’ve got lined up is possibilities and hopeful prayers.”
“I thought this was the permanent job--I’ve been looking for one since I got out of the Air Force 18 years ago,” Anderson said. “Now I’m 38, and if I don’t find something to retire with, I’m going to be in trouble.”
He recently took the written and oral exam for a position with the U.S. Border Patrol, he said.
“I passed it, but when I told them I was 38 they said, ‘Sorry, 36 is the cutoff.’ ”
Maria Martinez, a mother of three who has worked as an MD-11 assembler for almost two years, said she will need a miracle to be able to afford to go back to school for retraining.
“If I get a pink slip, I’m going to be on unemployment . . . and then try to go back to school to get a degree in something,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll have to find a (lower-paying) clerical job.”
